


Turning a Blind Corner

by cofax



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Winchester has mouths to feed. Nebraska and Oklahoma, 1984-1985.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning a Blind Corner

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by Hossgal.

*

 

The tiny fridge was already full of small paper bags and plastic deli containers that should have been discarded weeks ago. John shoved a suspiciously-bulging yogurt to the side to make room for his cold baloney sandwich and apple.

"Winchester!" Berrigan's voice startled him; John twitched, sending Felicia May's can of Tab crashing to the floor. He picked it up and stowed it away on the second shelf before turning around to meet the gaze of the shipping manager.

"I'm sorry--" he started, but Berrigan cut him off. The other man's pale lips were pursed, his meaty hands wrapped around the belt sealing in his bulging waist. Despite Berrigan's soft belly, his shoulders were still burly with muscle, and he filled the doorway to the break-room.

"What's your deal, Winchester? You think eight-to-four is _optional_? You figure the thirty-seven hour requirement only applies to other men?" Thirty-seven hours, because forty hours would mean Masterson had to pay the men benefits, and the old bastard was too cheap for that. But there just wasn't a lot of work in North Platte, Nebraska, and John couldn't afford to be too picky. He had his boys to feed.

John closed his hand over the top of the cheap plastic chair next to the break-room table. The poltergeist at the Darlington place had been shockingly strong, fighting John down into the cellar of the old farmhouse and throwing him against the wall three times before John was able to finish the purification spell. When it was all over, John had had to sit in the car and shake for at least half an hour before starting it up and heading home. By the time he'd bolted the door behind him and rechecked the locks on the windows in the boys' room, it was after three. Dean had tried to wake him, but it was finally Sammy's crying that dragged him stumbling out of bed, long after he was supposed to have reported for work.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Berrigan," he said again, letting go of the chair and straightening his spine. "My boy Sammy was sick, and I had to--"

He'd saved a life last night. Alanna Darlington would have starved to death, locked in the hall closet with the body of her stepfather's aunt, the old woman whose lonely rage had started the whole cycle of terror. Instead the girl was safe at her cousin's house, curled in the quilt she'd saved and drinking a mug of hot chocolate clutched between trembling hands. Her eyes were dark, not blue, but John had had to swallow hard against memories of Mary; he made his excuses and farewells as fast as he could, escaping to the comforting solitude of the Impala.

"I don't care." Berrigan's eyes were hard. "We've had this discussion, Winchester. You're good when you're here--man, you're worth two of the rest of these idiots. But I've warned you: you work my schedule or you don't work."

Six-fifty an hour was just barely enough to keep the boys in PBJs and Cheerios. Mrs. Lopez was good enough to watch Sammy for a dollar an hour, and Dean--thank God--was in kindergarten now. John had no idea what he was going to do when school closed for summer.

"I--Mr. Berrigan, I can't--" John swallowed. He wasn't going to--he hated asking for help. Winchesters _managed_, damnit. But he had the boys to think of. "I--please, sir. I need the work. It won't happen again."

"No, it won't." Berrigan's face softened, just perceptibly. "I'm sorry, John, but I can't give you chances I won't give anyone else. I'll give you ten minutes to clear out your locker." He extended an envelope.

Fired. After three months of slinging boxes by day and researching poltergeists and death omens by night. "You said yourself I'm worth--"

"John. Don't push it." Berrigan tossed the envelope on the table. "Good luck. Take care of those boys of yours." The break-room door swung open, letting in the sound of the machinery and voices from the shipping-room floor, and then closed again behind him with a hollow clunk.

There was one hundred and forty-seven dollars in the coffee can under the sink in the bathroom, and eleven dollars in John's wallet. The rent was due next Monday. Just for a moment, John allowed himself the fantasy of upending the table, stalking out of Masterson's Tool and Die in a rage. But Sammy had woken crying because he was hungry; and so John shoved the envelope into his pocket before carefully taking his baloney sandwich back out of the refrigerator.

*

 

Mary had the most beautiful breasts John had ever seen. They were full without being pornographic, just the right size to fit in his hands, with small rosy areolas and skin so fair he could see the pale lines of her veins through it. When Dean was nursing, he consumed milk at a shocking rate, and Mary dropped all of her pregnancy weight in about six weeks. She'd complained about it, laughing and wincing at once, at the way Dean latched onto the nipple and wouldn't let go. But John just grinned, wrapping his arms around both of them from behind, smelling the mixture of baby powder and some floral scent Mary's sister always sent for her birthday.

Funny thing was, when Dean switched to solid food--mashing the spinach and yams onto his face in a frenzy of enthusiasm--Mary's breasts shrank away. As if they'd been used up, drained dry. John was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to say anything, and it wasn't like he could really blame Dean. Mary bought new bras and stopped wearing the v-neck shirts John liked so much.

They came back, though, when she got pregnant for the second time. Bigger, even, than before--full enough to spill over John's hands, to press out past the edges of the old bras she wore too far into her pregnancy. When Sammy was born, the way he nursed was the first indication that John's two sons were going to be very different people. Mary was in tears by the second day home from the hospital, the way Sammy refused to eat. He inevitably turned away the first few times, even when he'd been restless and crying with hunger. Finally John popped a finger in his mouth, easing the nipple in, and Sammy got the idea. It was a battle, though, keeping him fed, and as the months went on, Mary began laying in tiny jars of baby food, stacking them two-deep in the cabinet next to the refrigerator.

Mary's breasts, though, had come back somehow, settled themselves somewhere between the lushness of pregnancy and the way Dean had drained them dry. John would watch as she nursed Sammy, whispering silly tales of rabbits and lambs into the baby's dark hair, her face easy with pleasure. He asked her once what it felt like, but she blushed and tucked her head down against Sammy's soft head, and John was so charmed he never asked again.

The first night at Mike and Kate's place, John's pants still stank of smoke, and Sammy wouldn't eat. Not the cold sandwiches Kate had fumbled together; not the chocolate pudding cup Dean ate, his solemn gaze never leaving his father's face; not the milk Kate heated in the microwave and offered in a plastic sippy-cup. The little jars of Gerber and the three bottles of pumped milk Mary kept in the freezer were gone, and John couldn't face going out to buy anything, not when there was food here, if Sammy would just eat it.

But Sammy turned away from the spoon, and wouldn't open his mouth for the milk, not even when his big brother came up next to him and whispered in his ear. When Dean sat himself down on the floor and tugged Sammy into his lap, swooping his own spoon full of chocolate pudding around in the air like a plane, John couldn't get out of the kitchen fast enough.

_Mary, I can't do this._

*

 

"Hey!" The apartment manager's voice was sharp, stopping John as he lifted his foot for the first stair. He shifted the duffel bag--backpacks were easier to carry but harder to extract anything from in the middle of a fight--and turned slowly. All he wanted was a hug from his boys, a shower, and a beer, in that order. The skin on his hands was dry and cracked, graveyard dirt ground deep into his nails and knuckles.

Mrs. Steen stood in the office doorway, her arms folded in disapproval. John frowned; he'd paid his rent on time, as always. "Mrs. Steen," he said, as courteously as he could at one in the morning, with bruises rising on his ribcage and the weapons in his bag weighing down one shoulder. "Can I do for you?"

"You can remember that it's against the law to leave kids alone for hours at a time, Mr. Winchester," she snapped in return. "I saw that little boy of yours in the parking lot after dark, and I know damn well you weren't here."

Dean. Dean had left the apartment? John was going to have words--but Mrs. Steen was still talking, the words coming faster now, as if she were anxious to get it all said. The mascara around her eyes had smudged, but her blue eye shadow glittered in the sallow light of the overhead bulb. "Next time I won't warn you--I'm just going to call the cops. It's not safe for kids to be left alone like that. I don't care what you do, you find a babysitter or you stop whatever it is you're doing." The flat glare she gave his bag indicated clearly what she thought John was up to on his late nights around Ponca City. As if there were a lot of opportunities for cat-burgling in north-central Oklahoma.

John swallowed; he knew what would happen if the police came and found Dean alone with 14-month-old Sammy in the apartment. John kept the guns locked away--he wasn't stupid--but he knew better than to leave Dean unarmed. They'd take the boys, place them with a family who didn't keep knives on the nightstands and bullets in the silverware drawers. And if they looked too close at John's research--well. They'd put the boys somewhere they'd be in danger, somewhere unprotected from the monsters John now knew were out there. The very thought of Dean and Sam out of his reach, out of his sight, made the desperation rise, clawing at him from the inside.

"Don't you worry about my boys, ma'am," he finally said, forcing down the anger at her naive interference. She meant well, but she couldn't know, and he knew better than to try to tell her. "I've made arrangements for them. We'll be fine." With a courtesy he didn't feel, he nodded to her before turning back to the stairs, and his boys.

They would have to move again. And as he fumbled for his keys at the door, and began opening the sequence of five bolts he'd installed, he wondered, for the first time, if maybe he should change his name.

*

 

Turned out that one of Blake McChesney's neighbors called the police about the ruckus. John knew it looked bad, the way Dean clutched his arm where the spirit had swatted him into the fence, and the bloody gash on John's head was bleeding heavily. He was pretty sure he could drive, anyway; but Dean was crying, little hiccupping sobs he was trying to hide from his father, and McChesney wouldn't let go of the shotgun, even though the spirit was gone.

John was too tired to wrestle the shotgun away, and he couldn't afford to replace it, not on five-seventy-five an hour at the 7-Eleven. As it was, he was out of silver rounds for the automatic, and the spice mixes Missouri said he needed for protection from haunts had to be shipped from god-damned _India_. So he sat heavily on the porch of McChesney's run-down farmhouse and pressed a handkerchief to his forehead, while Dean huddled against him, shivering as the night cooled. Just for a few minutes, while he got his breath back and Dean settled down.

He'd barely been there for two minutes, though, talking as soft as he could to McChesney, who was still spooked, when John saw the blue lights flashing up the lane. There was no way he could reach the car, get away without being spotted, and he was so damned tired. So he stood, hands apart, Dean still clinging to his leg, but silent now at the sight of the police car.

It started calmly enough, since McChesney had put the shotgun down out of sight on the porch, but as the deputies approached the older guy spotted the blood on John's face and the shattered window. "Evening, folks," he said, standing well back from the porch, hand on his belt. "We got a call about some gunshots and shouting. Want to tell us what's going on?"

John ground his teeth and looked at McChesney, but the old fellow was not going to be any help here, his eyes were still wide with shock. "Just some kids horsing around," John said, his brain moving too slowly.

"Horsing around?" The light was going, but John could see the woman raise an eyebrow. "Looks a bit worse than horsing around, you got a busted window there."

"Yeah, well," John said, but the woman was moving up onto the porch steps, and from there she could see the shotgun, the way the door was hanging on one hinge, the charred spot where the damn thing had tried to fry McChesney--and she stopped. Her jaw tightened under the brim of her hat.

"Frank," she said. "You're gonna need to come up here. And you," she said, turning and looking straight at John, "are gonna need to stay right there. You got me?"

McChesney was no damn use at all. They had to wrestle him off the porch, and he began to squawk about spirits and ghosts, and then they asked him who John was, and he couldn't remember the name. To be fair, they'd only met an hour ago, and John had been a bit too busy to introduce himself formally, but it didn't help.

"Sir," said Deputy Frank, handing back John's identification, "I'd like you to come with us until we can clear this up. There's been some break-ins in the neighborhood, and well, it looks like someone's been using kids to do it." He looked down at Dean, clearly considered putting a hand on the boy's shoulder, and then pulled it back. "You want to go for a ride in a police car, son?"

The hand Dean had wrapped in John's pants-leg tightened to a painful pinch. "No," said Dean.

"Well, I'm sorry about that," Deputy Frank replied, "but you and your dad will have to come along with us so we can get this all cleared up." And he put a hand on John's arm, turning him towards the cruiser.

John opened his mouth to speak, but this was the moment when Dean just lost it. He gave a wail and John swung around to reach for him, but Frank jerked John back, trying to tow him toward the car. John braced his feet and yanked his arm out of Frank's grip, not wanting to slug a sheriff's deputy in the performance of his duties, but desperate to get back to Dean.

Dean was screaming, fighting against the hold Frank's partner had on him; she wrapped an arm around him from behind and lifted him up, still kicking and crying. He knocked her hat off with one arm and she started to laugh, but then Dean had a knife in his hand--_Holy god, where'd the boy pull that from?_\--and things got very ugly very fast.

John found himself cuffed and flat on his face in the dirt, Dean about ten feet away, still crying. From what John could see, they weren't cuffing Dean, but the woman deputy had a good grip on him, holding him in place despite his struggles. John turned his head to the side, spat out a mouthful of crabgrass, and said dryly, "You mind arresting the toddler, too?"

The deputy wrenched her head around to stare at John. "The what?"

"My youngest," John said. "He's in the car." Sammy, who had slept through the entire escapade, tucked safely into the back seat of the Impala twenty yards away, bundled in his father's winter coat.

In the end, they let him go, because even the most suspicious deputy found it hard to imagine a single father would bring a two-year-old on a burglary expedition. But Frank took the shotgun (too short to be legal) and the knife Dean had had tucked away in his pocket (unsafe for a kid), and gave John a lecture about car seats for children under four. "Next time it's a fine, Mr. Winchester. It's for your boy's own safety, you know."

By the time John got them all back to their mildewed second-floor apartment it was almost midnight and Sammy was whimpering with hunger. John was supposed to open the store at five-thirty. Instead he fed Sammy some peanut-butter on the stale end of a loaf of Wonderbread, took a quick shower, and stuffed all his clothes and weapons into two big duffels. The next tenant could use the pots and pans, dish detergent and sponges. "C'mon, Dean," he said, slinging the straps over his shoulder. "Time to go."

It was very late, and Dean was yawning, but he picked up his brother without complaint. His little duffel bag swung and knocked against the wall as he followed his father down the hall. As they passed Apartment 20B, Dean stumbled, kicking over the neat stack of mail piled in front of the door. John paused, looking down, and scooped up the three most formal-looking envelopes. Cable bill, credit card invoice, and--yeah. John stared at the fat envelope with the American Express logo on it. Dean tugged at his sleeve. "Dad?"

"Yeah?" John turned the envelope over in his hands.

"We're not coming back, are we?" Dean shifted Sammy higher on his hip, blowing at the hair in his face. Sammy chomped sleepily, shoving his face into Dean's neck. There was still peanut-butter on his cheek.

John shoved the American Express envelope into his pocket, and then stuffed the cable bill in as well. "No, son, we're not."

"Good," said Dean, and started marching on down the hall towards the stairs. "I don't like it here. When we get to the next place, can we have pizza?"

John dropped his hand on Dean's shoulder and squeezed briefly, then ruffled Sammy's hair. The envelopes in his pocket crinkled as he swung open the door to the stairs. "Sure, Dean."

END


End file.
